How Reigning World Champion Britt Cox Preps Under Pressure

She may be reigning World Champion, but Britt Cox didn't set out to be one of the globe's best mogul skiers. The only reason she strapped on skis back in the day was to chase her brother around Falls Creek in Victoria, where her family lived.

"I just wanted to do what my big brother was doing...so we'd all go off after school and build a little jump in the trees or ski in a little bump line, and we'd be doing that right up until the lifts closed."

As it turned out, her after-school activities ended up honing her skills so much that she competed in her first mogul ski competition at the age of eight (when most of us were climbing trees!). The event kickstarted her love affair with the sport.

"I just loved the competitiveness of it, the pure adrenaline of competing, [plus] skiing and jumping combined fuelled my passion," the star admits.

For the next five or so years she competed in the local race club, trying a mixture of different skiing disciplines until she was awarded with a NSW Institute of Sport scholarship that saw her racing in Europe at 14. A year later in 2010, she found herself as one of the youngest athletes at the Winter Olympics in Vancouver.

"It happened so fast and I didn't have much time to think about the magnitude of the event," Cox remembers. "I saw a lot of skiers who were my idols and who I looked up to, and all of a sudden I was there competing against them!"

But it's exactly that kind of pressure that Cox loves. Which means that when she's not meditating or hanging with her dog, Doug, you'll find her at the top of a slope somewhere about to throw herself down it.

"[Before a race] I just try to breathe and bring myself into the moment, because I know that's when I'm going to ski my best. I aways remind myself why I'm doing what I'm doing, and that I love it," she explains.

"Then I clear my mind of too much thought, because I know that when I push out of the gate it's going to be my instinct that takes over and lets me naturally do what I've trained to do." What a champ!